In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through him,
and without him nothing came to be.
What came to be through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
(John 1:1-5)
In 2011, a first-of-its-kind book was published by Oxford University Press, The Jewish Annotated New Testament. It utilized the New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, but all the footnote commentaries and additional essays were the work of Jewish scholars.
For me, this brought a deeper and challenging understanding of the richness of so many familiar verses of the New Testament, especially the words of Jesus.
Professor Daniel Boyarin’s essay, “Logos, a Jewish Word, John’s Prologue as Midrash,” really struck me.
He explained that “Word” in John was not merely the obvious translation of the original Greek word, “Logos,” but also expressed a then very current concept in some Jewish philosophical circles.
The Word was understood as a kind of link between heaven and earth, between the divine and the human. The Word was the instrument of the Creator.
Remember the preamble of Genesis, the story of the creation of the world? Each action of the Creator is presented as “Then God said: Let there be…” and then it happened. The spoken Word was the agent of creation.
The Jewish philosopher, Philo, explained that, although the word of mortals is heard, the Words of God are seen as light is seen.
Some even identified the Word as a second, more visible manifestation of God, a sort of second person in the Godhead.
Official rabbinic theology was not so accepting of all of this, and some considered it the heresy of Two Powers in Heaven.
On the other hand several Old Testament texts supported this understanding of the “Word” as a divine entity functioning as a mediator—for example, Proverbs 8:22-31:
The Lord begot me, the beginning of his works,
the forerunner of his deeds of long ago;
From of old I was formed,
at the first, before the earth.
When there were no deeps I was brought forth,
when there were no fountains or springs of water;
Before the mountains were settled into place,
before the hills, I was brought forth;
When the earth and the fields were not yet made,
nor the first clods of the world.
When he established the heavens, there was I,
when he marked out the vault over the face of the deep;
When he made firm the skies above,
when he fixed fast the springs of the deep;
When he set for the sea its limit,
so that the waters should not transgress his command;
When he fixed the foundations of earth,
then was I beside him as artisan;
I was his delight day by day,
playing before him all the while,
Playing over the whole of his earth,
having my delight with human beings.
Thank God for the Jewish scholarship that helps Christians better understand their faith!
16 May 2021